Result flags and statuses

The letters a result record's abnormal flag (field 7) and result status (field 9) are read against, and the reference-range forms (field 6). Matching is exact after the surrounding whitespace is trimmed: letter case is never folded. Read a result safely shows how to use them.

Abnormal flags

Graded against the HL7 v3 ObservationInterpretation code system, which carries the concepts kept aligned with the HL7 v2 Table 0078 interpretation codes. flag.vocabulary names the system and the version we compared against. ABNORMAL_FLAG_CODES is this list in code.

Letter	flag.meaning	Notes
L	below-normal
H	above-normal
LL	critically-below-normal	the critical (panic) low
HH	critically-above-normal	the critical (panic) high
<	below-scale	below the measurable range
>	above-scale	above the measurable range
N	normal
A	abnormal
AA	very-abnormal
U	significant-change-up	a change since the last result, not a unit or a magnitude
D	significant-change-down	a change since the last result, not a unit or a magnitude
B	better
W	worse
S	susceptible	microbiology susceptibility
R	resistant	microbiology susceptibility; not the repeat delimiter here
I	intermediate	microbiology susceptibility
HU	significantly-high	outside the interval by enough to want attention, not yet critical
LU	significantly-low	outside the interval by enough to want attention, not yet critical

Any other letter, including the deprecated H> and L< that HU and LU replace, reads meaning: "undefined" and recognized: false, keeps its raw text, and raises ASTM_RECORD_UNDEFINED_ABNORMAL_FLAG. It is never read as normal. An empty field gives no flag.

Result statuses

No citable published source binds these letters: the normative text is purchase-gated and we have not read it. So status.vocabulary.attributed is always false, and status.vocabulary.reason says why.

Letter	status.meaning	isActiveFinal	supersedes	cancelled
F	final	true	false	false
C	correction	false	true	false
P	preliminary	false	false	false
R	previously-transmitted	false	false	false
S	partial	false	false	false
I	pending	false	false	false
X	cancelled	false	false	true
absent	unspecified	false	false	false
other	undefined	false	false	false

status is always present. An absent or empty field is unspecified, never final. Any other letter is undefined, keeps its raw text, and raises ASTM_RECORD_UNDEFINED_RESULT_STATUS.

Reference ranges

Form	Example	range.kind	Bounds set
low-high	3.5-5.0	closed	low and high
<high	<5	open-low	high
>low	>10	open-high	low
anything else	see note	unparsed	none; raw keeps the text

A bound is an optional minus sign, digits, and an optional fraction, and it is kept as the text it was, never converted to a number. Spaces around the -, < or > are allowed. The delimiter - and the open-ended forms come from permissively licensed reference parsers and vendor transcripts, not from the purchased text of the standard. An unparsed range raises ASTM_RECORD_UNPARSEABLE_REFERENCE_RANGE.

In the API reference

• interpretAbnormalFlag, AbnormalFlag and ABNORMAL_FLAG_CODES
• interpretResultStatus and ResultStatus
• parseReferenceRange and ReferenceRange
• ABNORMAL_FLAG_VOCABULARY and RESULT_STATUS_VOCABULARY